Nevada (19 page)

Maybe what Maria needs isn’t staring at her own navel and getting mad at herself for being useless. Maybe what she needs to do is to look the fuck away from the mirror for twenty minutes and pay attention to someone else: to someone who could actually use what little she does understand, the little wisdom she does have. What she probably should be doing right now is getting the fuck out of this car. It occurs to her that if the dog and the cat she told James H. were in this car hadn’t been rhetorical embellishments but had instead been imaginary companions for this whole car ride, maybe she wouldn’t feel so outstandingly weird and unproductive right now, maybe she could just have spent a lot of time working this shit out with an imaginary dog and cat, instead of a very real cramped up and tired pointer finger exhausting the scan button on the radio.

The scan button’s probably the cleanest surface in this car and she’s like, fine, I’m gonna go talk to that girl and tell her that she’s a girl and she’s going to be like Nah I’m not a girl, and I’m going to be like No, you are a girl, and she’s going to be like Yeah the only reason I said I wasn’t a girl is that I’m a girl but it seems like it would be impossible to get from this body and social situation to a body that reads as female and friends who read me as female and I’ll be like Yeah let’s talk about that I have a lot of thoughts on the subject and she’s going to be like, cool, and I’m going to be like, Yeah, you’re young and you’re not that tall and you look like puberty has barely even gotten to your house, let’s get you on hormones
ASAP
and she’ll be like I don’t know man and we’ll talk and she’ll cry and I’ll set her up a livejournal so she can sort through all her feelings and then I’ll leave and totally learn something about myself, too.

She turns the car back off but cracks the window. Then she opens the rest of the windows, too, locks the door and walks back across the parking lot.

12.

Ten minutes after Maria leaves, just as James has made peace with the fact that he’s never going to see this girl again, she comes strutting back up the aisle toward him. Maria Motherfucking Griffiths, Queen of All She Surveys. There’s an expression on her face that’s kind of hard to look at, like she’s just about convinced herself that she’s cool and in control. But not quite. It’s like, you almost can’t see that she’s terrified.

James H., she says when she gets to the music and movies section. Her voice doesn’t sound terrified, I know we don’t know each other or anything, but I’ve been driving for a long time and not really talking to anyone about anything anywhere, for a long time, and now that I’ve stopped in a proper town, I’m thinking about hanging out for a minute, but I don’t know anybody here. Except, like, you? I was kind of hoping you could show me around.

James responds without thinking: This is a fuckin’ dumb town to stop in. Then he looks around. That’s not the sort of thing you’re supposed to say when you’re the public representative of the Wal-Mart corporation.

I mean, he says, Uh, look, yeah, I guess so? There isn’t really much to show you but I guess I’m not doing anything.

He has this very clear thought that while it’s weird for a stranger just to come up and ask you to hang out, especially a stranger who looks like a murderess, that even if she actually is a literal murderess, this is still probably the only chance he’s ever going to have to, like, talk to an actual trans woman. His next thought is one long whoa but the one after that is a shapeless thing about how, like obviously she doesn’t know about him and whatever his deal with gender is, and obviously he can’t let her know that he can tell that she’s trans because that would obviously be rude as hell. That this is going to be kind of complicated to navigate or whatever? And then once he’s thought all this stuff he ends up at probably the first thing he should have thought, which is like, what would Nicole think about him not seeing her tonight? For one single night out of the entirety of their desolate union or whatever, and on that one day out of like seven hundred or whatever it’s been, like sort of going out with this other girl?

So he blurts: Also I have a girlfriend so—

She laughs.

Yeah whatever James H. don’t worry, one I don’t even date dudes—James winces and tries to hide it—and two I’m probably ten years older than you so we’re not even, like, in the same dating league. Technically speaking. Ethically speaking.

Cool, he says. He has an urge to ask for that in writing, thinking whoa, she is into girls! If you read the Internet a little bit you know that there are trans women who are into girls and it’s a little bit terrifying to think about because if you can be trans
and
into girls then, like, that makes it more possible that he could even be trans, like legitimately for real trans, which he doesn’t even want to think about and obviously that is not even a very compelling argument. That it is a possibility. Who cares. But he’s still kind of like, thank you Divine Providence for dropping this hot, weird dyke trans girl into my lap, out of nowhere, in a totally nonsexual manner.

He thinks, maybe me and Nicole are even broken up though. He’d just assumed he’d see her in a day or two and nothing would have happened and they’d be unbroken up again, like what always happens, but now he’s like, actually, this matters. And then he realizes wait, shit, I already said it out loud, that I have a girlfriend. Obviously that is the classic defensive maneuver if a girl hits on you: no way man, I have a secret girlfriend! She lives in, um, Olympia! For college. But James was already thinking about Nicole and he doesn’t want to date anyone ever so she’s a good excuse but also he actually also, like, is in a relationship with her. In real life.

Maria asks when he gets off and instead of making a stupid joke about getting off James is like, I dunno, in like half an hour.

Cool, she says, I’m in this ugly little green car at the far end of the parking lot, there’s a bunch of embarrassing bumper stickers and it hasn’t been washed in a while.

And there’s a dog and a cat.

Haha, yeah, she says. A dog and a cat. Totally.

Half an hour later James clocks out and finds her car right away. It’s not like the Star City Wal-Mart parking lot is ever fucking full. She’s sitting under a tree in front of the green car, looking all sweaty.

Hey, she says.

Hey.

They look at each other for a second, the entirety of the terror of whatever is about to happen a physical presence in the air between them, before James breaks the tension with the totally suave acknowledgment Uh, aren’t you hot?

Yeah dude, she says, But I have this dilemma, right? I’m enough of a feminist not to shave my legs really ever, but not enough of a feminist to actually let anybody see.

But like, you’re wearing a sweater and a jacket and stuff.

She waits a beat and then goes, James H., have you ever spent a couple weeks in the same clothes?

He’s like, I don’t think so, and she goes, You just get kind of used to it and the longer you don’t take anything off the less you want to. Like y’know Spider-Man and the Venom suit? Same thing.

James tries to keep up but he’s already getting lost. He needs to smoke.

I know… of… Spider-Man and Venom, he says.

So listen, what do people do here? Is there a lake where we can go and drink beer or like a trestle where kids smoke weird shit and burn each other with cigarettes?

Uh, there’s a river. But it sucks.

James H., Maria says, I get it. Everything here sucks. But I don’t want to drive any further toward the Pacific right now and what else are we going to do. Sit here and hotbox the car?

James is like: Well. Actually.

13.

He does the logistics. If they’re going to sit in a car with the windows up, they’re going to have to find someplace shady to do it, and someplace away from where the cops would drive by. They will have to be committed to the plan. Basically what this means is that they have to drive back to his apartment building and park in the shade of the eastern side of the building. Which is cool, he’s gotten all baked there a bunch of times, nobody cares. It’s just like, if they’re going to drive all the way over to the house, they might as well hotbox his fucking bathroom.

But she’s company so they park in a shady spot behind the apartment building and he smokes her out. It’s like she’s never smoked out before, she’s all coughing and having to take long breaks between tokes and then once she’s stoned she can’t really communicate right. Her sentences trail off, she starts laughing at nothing. It’s kind of annoying, actually. She keeps laughing at the idea of, like, that band Sublime, who are actually not bad. But since she can just barely hold up her end of the conversation, James starts monologuing and after a while she kind of gets into the groove of it, nodding like she’s following what he’s saying and stuff. Mostly he finds himself talking about Nicole. He’s like, here’s the thing, I have this girlfriend, and I really like her, she’s cool as hell, but. But the fact even that there’s a but kind of means something, right? He’s like, it’s not even that I don’t want to be in a relationship with her, I just, I don’t want to be in this context, working this job, living in this apartment, in this town, and she’s a part of that. He’s probably not doing a good job explaining it but he starts envisioning My Life and Everything as this huge, complicated braid, like a friendship bracelet, with the different threads in it representing, like, his job, and Nicole, and his apartment, and his mom, and all the things that end up making up the tapestry of his life. The friendship bracelet of his life. He knows it’s a dumb stoner epiphany but he’s going for it, he’s like, Nicole is one of the strands of that thread, she’s tied to this town and this life, and I just, I’m like, I don’t know if I can get away from all this stuff I don’t care about or want and stay with her, you know?

Maria’s like, Did she say that, and James is like, Did she say what, and Maria’s like, Y’know, did Nicole say she wanted to stay here?

James thinks about it and has to admit that no, not in so many words, probably not, but he’s like, well she’s never said anything about wanting to leave, I guess.

Here’s the thing, James H., she says, still looking all dazed but suddenly lucid. What do you want?

Not all this, he says.

No I know, Maria says, But what do you want? It’s easy to say that where you are and what you have are dumb, but it’s harder and probably more productive to name concrete things and aspire to them. You know?

James hasn’t even thought about actually wanting things before, so he’s like, Jesus, I have no idea what I actually want. Maybe to move to the bay?

Sick dude, she says, picking up the sticky green blown-glass pipe, taking a hit, holding it in, then exhaling: Me too.

James is like Haha oh yeah and she’s like Haha, yeah man, and they both laugh. The smoke in the car isn’t as thick as a Cheech and Chong movie or anything, but it’s pretty intense, everybody’s eyes are starting to get watery and painful.

For real though, Maria says, Think about specifics. Do you want to be in a band? Do you want to go to college, write a novel, sit in a tree so that nobody can bulldoze it? Do you want to have lots of weird sex, no sex, lots of weird vegan food, a haircut that reads like a secret code that identifies you as a member of a subculture to other members of that subculture. Be specific, James H., because now is the time in your life when you can do anything. And anything is gonna turn out great.

She’s talking weird so James is like, What are you quoting right now, dude.

Old Faith No More, she says.

James has heard of Faith No More.

Listen, do you want to go inside and find some food and stuff, he asks.

Fuck yeah I do, Maria says, do you have frozen pizzas?

I think so, yeah, James says, thinking pretty hard about frozen pizza. Fuck yeah. Finally: something awesome.

14.

Okay Maria didn’t mean to get too stoned to have a real talk but like a baked-ass Machiavellian genius, she managed to turn the conversation toward serious stuff right away. Even baked out of her head she could tell right away that this kid’s relationship with his girlfriend wasn’t the problem. Nicole is probably nineteen and cool and way ahead of James in terms of pretty much everything. James just doesn’t know how to be in a relationship because he doesn’t know how to be himself and you can’t be one of the people in a relationship if you’re busily refusing to be a person.

Right?

And his apartment doesn’t look like the apartment of a person. It isn’t the standard 20-year-old boy apartment though—there’s no sink full of dishes, no armpit smell. It’s like a nonapartment, a ghost apartment. It’s literally, like, an overhead light, a futon, a computer desk, a beat up old little kid’s dresser, and a flimsy-looking entertainment center with an enormous old 27-inch tube television. There are ways you could tell it was a Young Dude’s apartment: speakers so large they look out of place, hooked up to the stereo that gleams more brightly than anything else in the room. The extensive and neatly arranged library of DVD cases. It’s all, like, Classic Films, too, instead of complete anime series or something.Pretentious, fully enmeshed in patriarchal systems of validity determination, but at least not weird and annoying.

It takes her a second to figure out why a space so sparsely populated with stuff could feel lived in at all. It hits her: it’s because everything is saturated in weed smoke. The dust on the TV screen and the DVD shelves is clearly as least as much ash and
THC
as it is old skin and the dust mites who love it. It’s seeped deep into every surface.

There’s no pizza.

Can we order in, Maria asks.

I dunno man. I guess. I mean, there’s a Domino’s, but that shit sucks and it’s expensive. There’s a spot by the Wal-Mart but I guess I’m kind of avoiding it.

James doesn’t mention that he’s avoiding it because he’s avoiding his girlfriend. He hasn’t really acknowledged this to himself.